Profit chasing would absolutrly exist in a system without restriction and would be 1000x worse
Yes, but what you’re describing is Anarcho-capitalism, or Right-wing Libertarianism, not Anarchism. Anarchists do have restrictions, and there would be no profit incentive, as money could be entirely eliminated if they wished, and instead operate on a Gift economy. This concept is wonderfully explored in Ursula LeGuin’s The Dispossessed, if you’d like to see how such a system could operate in practice.
The entire point of Socialist Anarchism is to prevent the centralization of power or the hoarding of private property. Eliminating money, and thus profit incentive, is simply another tool to prevent centralization of power or the incentive to accumulate resources.
as money could be entirely eliminated if they wished,
Money is only a quantification of wealth; most pre-modern societies are not even monetized, but have massive wealth inequality all the same. In order to eliminate profit, you must eliminate wealth; to eliminate wealth, you must eliminate personal property, not just private property.
and instead operate on a Gift economy.
As your own link notes, gift economies do not eliminate the accumulation of wealth or the desire to do so; accumulating wealth becomes a means of building social capital, which translates into power.
Accumulation of material wealth is only really possible with a hierarchy (as there is only so much an individual can realistically accumulate without underlings), and that hierarchy usually requires a power imbalance to form. A society with decentralized power as cornerstone makes it much harder (though not impossible) for those types of imbalances to happen.
In order to eliminate profit, you must eliminate wealth; to eliminate wealth, you must eliminate personal property, not just private property.
Personal property is classified as what an individual person or family can actively use themselves. If you begin hoarding more than you or your family can realistically use, the excess is no longer considered personal property, but private property, which may get you ejected from that community if you actively hoard under an Anarchist society.
Private property is how imbalances of power can explode from a small local problem to a bigger one.
Quoting someone who explained the difference between private and personal property:
I like to link the word “private” with “privation” or “deprivation”. Private property is easily identifiable by its effects on others, specifically, it’s deprivation. There are hundreds of thousands of hammers. Having one doesn’t deprive anyone of anything. At most only one person can use the hammer.
A house is usable by an entire family, and if I own it but don’t use it myself, my ownership deprives an entire family of its use. That scales to apartment buildings pretty easily. Then there’s farms where basically it’s impossible for one person to do all of the work on a farm or eat all of the products of a farm, but my ownership has the effect of depriving anyone the right to work there or the right to consume its products. A factory is truly impossible for one person to use, but my ownership of it allows me to deprive everyone of its products unless they meet my price demands and also allows me to deprive everyone of use of the factory to make anything at all.
Private property entails a deprivation of society of socially necessary commodities.
Personal property absolutely does not have to be eliminated, and does not contribute to profit incentive, hierarchies, or power imbalances. Only Private Property does that.
Accumulation of material wealth is only really possible with a hierarchy (as there is only so much an individual can realistically accumulate without underlings), and that hierarchy usually requires a power imbalance to form. A society with decentralized power as cornerstone makes it much harder (though not impossible) for those types of imbalances to happen.
… fucking what.
Accumulation of material wealth is extremely easy without hierarchy.
Personal property is classified as what an individual person or family can actively use themselves. If you begin hoarding more than you or your family can realistically use, the excess is no longer considered personal property, but private property, which may get you ejected from that community if you actively hoard under an Anarchist society.
So any jewelry, since it is not, realistically, used, will get you ejected from the anarchist society?
I ask this facetiously, not seriously, because my point is that the definition very quickly becomes murky.
Private property is how imbalances of power can explode from a small local problem to a bigger one.
No disagreement there, but I’m discussing precisely the issue of local problems. We are regarding each anarchist commune as its own entity; thus, we must regard each of these entities as being either capable or incapable of solving the fundamental problems with arise with a society.
I like to link the word “private” with “privation” or “deprivation”. Private property is easily identifiable by its effects on others, specifically, it’s deprivation. There are hundreds of thousands of hammers. Having one doesn’t deprive anyone of anything. At most only one person can use the hammer.
And if there’s a shortage of hammers, does personal property no longer remain personal? Is personal property purely conditional in an anarchist society, based on the desires of one’s neighbors? What defines a shortage? If someone ‘hoards’ a personal hammer that they use only a few times a year, when the community could use a hammer for the second floor of the school so the janitor doesn’t have to go up and down the stairs every time he needs to make a repair, is that a shortage? What criteria are used to determine these things? Or is it simply a matter of those who are liked by the community are treated well, and those who are not extroverted are punished arbitrarily?
A house is usable by an entire family, and if I own it but don’t use it myself, my ownership deprives an entire family of its use.
Even if you own it and use it yourself, your usage deprives others of its use. How big is a house permitted to be? How fine? Since we are regarding housing as potentially personal property, do you not see how someone who simply owns and uses a fine house can accumulate favors, goodwill, connections, and even material goods in excess of someone who does not own or use a fine house?
That scales to apartment buildings pretty easily. Then there’s farms where basically it’s impossible for one person to do all of the work on a farm or eat all of the products of a farm, but my ownership has the effect of depriving anyone the right to work there or the right to consume its products. A factory is truly impossible for one person to use, but my ownership of it allows me to deprive everyone of its products unless they meet my price demands and also allows me to deprive everyone of use of the factory to make anything at all.
I think those are all pretty fair and classic examples of private property, and have no objection.
Private property entails a deprivation of society of socially necessary commodities.
But if we are to keep to that definition strictly, then profit, hierarchy, and power imbalances are all still possible.
Personal property absolutely does not have to be eliminated, and does not contribute to profit incentive, hierarchies, or power imbalances. Only Private Property does that.
How does that figure? Do you think people are only motivated to profit if they can own a factory someday? Most people who spend their time clawing desperately at their fellow man for a few extra bucks not only will never own private property in that sense, but generally do not even dream of owning private property in that sense. They want a better house than they have, more comforts than they have, more free time than they have, more respect than they have. And people leverage personal property for hierarchies and power imbalances all the damn time - from tales of personal jealousy in fucking Bronze Age folklore about villages smaller and with less range of wealth than most modern apartment buildings, to who does or does not have the Good Shoes today.
Accumulation of material wealth is extremely easy without hierarchy.
To accumulate wealth as an individual, you need other people who can help you gather or take that wealth/resources, or do so on your behalf.
So any jewelry, since it is not, realistically, used, will get you ejected from the anarchist society?
Jewelry is not an essential good to society, it’s just a bauble. Someone having a personal jewelry collection doesn’t deprive anyone else of any essential need. It would be an issue if they forcibly took someone else’s jewelry, but if they traded for it, or made it themselves, it’s just personal property, and they could reasonably collect as much of it as they want, as it is unlikely they would be able to realistically gather enough to cause a problem in society from a shortage of precious metals for some societal need.
And if there’s a shortage of hammers, does personal property no longer remain personal?
You as an individual don’t realistically need 100 or 1000 hammers. That would be hoarding. And you most certainly couldn’t individual own a large factory that made hammers (but you could collectively own it in a worker cooperative).
But a few personal hammers that you use for your own projects are your personal property, even in a hammer shortage. If you allow personal property to be confiscated for societal need, it’s little different from Marxist-Leninism.
Even if you own it and use it yourself, your usage deprives others of its use.
You are as deserving of a place to live as anyone else. You are not deserving of multiple places to potentially live if someone else is without a home. You can’t take someone else’s home that they personally use, and they can’t take a home that you personally use.
How big is a house permitted to be? How fine?
If we assume that everyone who currently lives in their existing home gets to keep it, then the style or size of a house would be determined by the people willing to build them. You could build your own house as you wish, as long as large as you can realistically construct on your own, or if you can convince a group of friends to help you build a bigger one (they may want collective ownership if they help, or they may do it as a favor to you). Otherwise you might participate in a building group that makes housing for people, like how this group in Spain operates.
To accumulate wealth as an individual, you need other people who can help you gather or take that wealth/resources, or do so on your behalf.
That’s the exact opposite of the entire point of commodity money.
Jewelry is not an essential good to society, it’s just a bauble. Someone having a personal jewelry collection doesn’t deprive anyone else of any essential need. It would be an issue if they forcibly took someone else’s jewelry, but if they traded for it, or made it themselves, it’s just personal property, and they could reasonably collect as much of it as they want,
Okay. Do you not see how controlling a large amount of wealth in the form of jewelry can give a person influence even in a society without formal units of account for monetary expressions of value?
But a few personal hammers that you use for your own projects are your personal property, even in a hammer shortage. If you allow personal property to be confiscated for societal need, it’s little different from Marxist-Leninism.
But then you admit that personal property is not defined by its lack of deprivation of society of needed commodities, which drives us right back to square one.
You are as deserving of a place to live as anyone else. You are not deserving of multiple places to potentially live if someone else is without a home. You can’t take someone else’s home that they personally use, and they can’t take a home that you personally use.
My point there is linked to my point below about the size and quality of the house, not the number of houses owned. I presumed, in the discussion, that we were discussing a single, actively-used house.
If we assume that everyone who currently lives in their existing home gets to keep it, then the style or size of a house would be determined by the people willing to build them. You could build your own house as you wish, as long as large as you can realistically construct on your own, or if you can convince a group of friends to help you build a bigger one (they may want collective ownership if they help, or they may do it as a favor to you).
But in that case we’re back at the issue of early ‘big men’ chiefdom style societies, where the accumulation of valuable goods is itself perpetuated by the ownership of those goods, rather than the usage of those goods or one’s labor. If John Jacobs is living in a little shack on the side of the river, and Malcolm Red is living in a palace a stone’s throw away, how is it moral for Malcolm to continue in that state of affairs?
Do you not see how controlling a large amount of wealth in the form of jewelry can give a person influence even in a society without formal units of account for monetary expressions of value?
It may be able to be used as a bargaining chip, but overall it would be much less valued under a society where gaining tokens of exchange isn’t tied to access to a decent life. Right now, jewelry is valued because it can then be converted to monetary units. Those units are valuable because so many are still clamoring for them to get access to those basics.
If monetary tokens could only be used for things beyond the basics, they may still have value, but you could no longer be able to exploit people nearly as hard with them.
But then you admit that personal property is not defined by its lack of deprivation of society of needed commodities, which drives us right back to square one.
No. Personal property is defined as something that an individual or family uses. Private property is any excess resource or tool that an individual or family cannot use themselves.
If John Jacobs is living in a little shack on the side of the river, and Malcolm Red is living in a palace a stone’s throw away, how is it moral for Malcolm to continue in that state of affairs?
A literal palace probably couldn’t be reasonably justified as personal property, but for simplicity’s sake, most people who already own their home would be able to keep it, even if it’s large. However, it’s likely that the palace or mansion owners would then need to maintain those themselves if they wished for it to be just their own personal property, and they would likely find it very difficult to get others to maintain it for them without sharing it in some way.
John Jacobs and the Palace owner (if they eventually found it unmaintainable on their own) would both be able to join a building collective to contribute to the construction of a more reasonable a home they could then own. They would also have access to the guaranteed basic housing available to anyone (assuming enough had been constructed by that point).
It may be able to be used as a bargaining chip, but overall it would be much less valued under a society where gaining tokens of exchange isn’t tied to access to a decent life.
It would be less valued, you say? In a society where transferring value for labor is no longer able to be performed by money, and so the only other options are social connections or barter?
That’s not even getting into questions like loaning jewelry out, social influence, etc etc etc.
Right now, jewelry is valued because it can then be converted to monetary units. Those units are valuable because so many are still clamoring for them to get access to those basics.
Again, most people in the modern world are not short of basics, but of things they want. It doesn’t sap their ambition one bit. Only reduces their desperation.
Giving people their needs keeps them from murder, not manslaughter.
No. Personal property is defined as something that an individual or family uses. Private property is any excess resource or tool that an individual or family cannot use themselves.
This is literally what you said:
I like to link the word “private” with “privation” or “deprivation”. Private property is easily identifiable by its effects on others, specifically, it’s deprivation.
Then private property is no longer easily identifiable by its effects on others, now private property is ‘excess’ personal property, and the question of ‘excess’ is returned to use; and use, as we have established, can be highly irregular but still regarded as valid. Which means we return to square one - under what circumstances can one differentiate between personal and movable private property beyond “simply a matter of those who are liked by the community are treated well, and those who are not extroverted are punished arbitrarily?”
A literal palace probably couldn’t be reasonably justified as personal property, but for simplicity’s sake, most people who already own their home would be able to keep it, even if it’s large. However, it’s likely that the palace or mansion owners would then need to maintain those themselves if they wished for it to be just their own personal property, and they would likely find it very difficult to get others to maintain it for them without sharing it in some way.
Yes, that’s how clientistic systems begin in early state societies and feudal societies. It’s not pretty.
John Jacobs and the Palace owner (if they eventually found it unmaintainable on their own) would both be able to join a building collective to contribute to the construction of a more reasonable a home they could then own. They would also have access to the guaranteed basic housing available to anyone (assuming enough had been constructed by that point).
That’s not at all an answer to the question that I was asked. I reiterate:
"If John Jacobs is living in a little shack on the side of the river, and Malcolm Red is living in a palace a stone’s throw away, how is it moral for Malcolm to continue in that state of affairs?"
Yes, but what you’re describing is Anarcho-capitalism, or Right-wing Libertarianism, not Anarchism. Anarchists do have restrictions, and there would be no profit incentive, as money could be entirely eliminated if they wished, and instead operate on a Gift economy. This concept is wonderfully explored in Ursula LeGuin’s The Dispossessed, if you’d like to see how such a system could operate in practice.
Profit does not have to be money, it can be power or hoarding of other things.
The entire point of Socialist Anarchism is to prevent the centralization of power or the hoarding of private property. Eliminating money, and thus profit incentive, is simply another tool to prevent centralization of power or the incentive to accumulate resources.
Money is only a quantification of wealth; most pre-modern societies are not even monetized, but have massive wealth inequality all the same. In order to eliminate profit, you must eliminate wealth; to eliminate wealth, you must eliminate personal property, not just private property.
As your own link notes, gift economies do not eliminate the accumulation of wealth or the desire to do so; accumulating wealth becomes a means of building social capital, which translates into power.
Accumulation of material wealth is only really possible with a hierarchy (as there is only so much an individual can realistically accumulate without underlings), and that hierarchy usually requires a power imbalance to form. A society with decentralized power as cornerstone makes it much harder (though not impossible) for those types of imbalances to happen.
Personal property is classified as what an individual person or family can actively use themselves. If you begin hoarding more than you or your family can realistically use, the excess is no longer considered personal property, but private property, which may get you ejected from that community if you actively hoard under an Anarchist society.
Private property is how imbalances of power can explode from a small local problem to a bigger one.
Quoting someone who explained the difference between private and personal property:
Personal property absolutely does not have to be eliminated, and does not contribute to profit incentive, hierarchies, or power imbalances. Only Private Property does that.
… fucking what.
Accumulation of material wealth is extremely easy without hierarchy.
So any jewelry, since it is not, realistically, used, will get you ejected from the anarchist society?
I ask this facetiously, not seriously, because my point is that the definition very quickly becomes murky.
No disagreement there, but I’m discussing precisely the issue of local problems. We are regarding each anarchist commune as its own entity; thus, we must regard each of these entities as being either capable or incapable of solving the fundamental problems with arise with a society.
And if there’s a shortage of hammers, does personal property no longer remain personal? Is personal property purely conditional in an anarchist society, based on the desires of one’s neighbors? What defines a shortage? If someone ‘hoards’ a personal hammer that they use only a few times a year, when the community could use a hammer for the second floor of the school so the janitor doesn’t have to go up and down the stairs every time he needs to make a repair, is that a shortage? What criteria are used to determine these things? Or is it simply a matter of those who are liked by the community are treated well, and those who are not extroverted are punished arbitrarily?
Even if you own it and use it yourself, your usage deprives others of its use. How big is a house permitted to be? How fine? Since we are regarding housing as potentially personal property, do you not see how someone who simply owns and uses a fine house can accumulate favors, goodwill, connections, and even material goods in excess of someone who does not own or use a fine house?
I think those are all pretty fair and classic examples of private property, and have no objection.
But if we are to keep to that definition strictly, then profit, hierarchy, and power imbalances are all still possible.
How does that figure? Do you think people are only motivated to profit if they can own a factory someday? Most people who spend their time clawing desperately at their fellow man for a few extra bucks not only will never own private property in that sense, but generally do not even dream of owning private property in that sense. They want a better house than they have, more comforts than they have, more free time than they have, more respect than they have. And people leverage personal property for hierarchies and power imbalances all the damn time - from tales of personal jealousy in fucking Bronze Age folklore about villages smaller and with less range of wealth than most modern apartment buildings, to who does or does not have the Good Shoes today.
To accumulate wealth as an individual, you need other people who can help you gather or take that wealth/resources, or do so on your behalf.
Jewelry is not an essential good to society, it’s just a bauble. Someone having a personal jewelry collection doesn’t deprive anyone else of any essential need. It would be an issue if they forcibly took someone else’s jewelry, but if they traded for it, or made it themselves, it’s just personal property, and they could reasonably collect as much of it as they want, as it is unlikely they would be able to realistically gather enough to cause a problem in society from a shortage of precious metals for some societal need.
You as an individual don’t realistically need 100 or 1000 hammers. That would be hoarding. And you most certainly couldn’t individual own a large factory that made hammers (but you could collectively own it in a worker cooperative).
But a few personal hammers that you use for your own projects are your personal property, even in a hammer shortage. If you allow personal property to be confiscated for societal need, it’s little different from Marxist-Leninism.
You are as deserving of a place to live as anyone else. You are not deserving of multiple places to potentially live if someone else is without a home. You can’t take someone else’s home that they personally use, and they can’t take a home that you personally use.
If we assume that everyone who currently lives in their existing home gets to keep it, then the style or size of a house would be determined by the people willing to build them. You could build your own house as you wish, as long as large as you can realistically construct on your own, or if you can convince a group of friends to help you build a bigger one (they may want collective ownership if they help, or they may do it as a favor to you). Otherwise you might participate in a building group that makes housing for people, like how this group in Spain operates.
That’s the exact opposite of the entire point of commodity money.
Okay. Do you not see how controlling a large amount of wealth in the form of jewelry can give a person influence even in a society without formal units of account for monetary expressions of value?
But then you admit that personal property is not defined by its lack of deprivation of society of needed commodities, which drives us right back to square one.
My point there is linked to my point below about the size and quality of the house, not the number of houses owned. I presumed, in the discussion, that we were discussing a single, actively-used house.
But in that case we’re back at the issue of early ‘big men’ chiefdom style societies, where the accumulation of valuable goods is itself perpetuated by the ownership of those goods, rather than the usage of those goods or one’s labor. If John Jacobs is living in a little shack on the side of the river, and Malcolm Red is living in a palace a stone’s throw away, how is it moral for Malcolm to continue in that state of affairs?
It may be able to be used as a bargaining chip, but overall it would be much less valued under a society where gaining tokens of exchange isn’t tied to access to a decent life. Right now, jewelry is valued because it can then be converted to monetary units. Those units are valuable because so many are still clamoring for them to get access to those basics.
If monetary tokens could only be used for things beyond the basics, they may still have value, but you could no longer be able to exploit people nearly as hard with them.
No. Personal property is defined as something that an individual or family uses. Private property is any excess resource or tool that an individual or family cannot use themselves.
A literal palace probably couldn’t be reasonably justified as personal property, but for simplicity’s sake, most people who already own their home would be able to keep it, even if it’s large. However, it’s likely that the palace or mansion owners would then need to maintain those themselves if they wished for it to be just their own personal property, and they would likely find it very difficult to get others to maintain it for them without sharing it in some way.
John Jacobs and the Palace owner (if they eventually found it unmaintainable on their own) would both be able to join a building collective to contribute to the construction of a more reasonable a home they could then own. They would also have access to the guaranteed basic housing available to anyone (assuming enough had been constructed by that point).
It would be less valued, you say? In a society where transferring value for labor is no longer able to be performed by money, and so the only other options are social connections or barter?
That’s not even getting into questions like loaning jewelry out, social influence, etc etc etc.
Again, most people in the modern world are not short of basics, but of things they want. It doesn’t sap their ambition one bit. Only reduces their desperation.
Giving people their needs keeps them from murder, not manslaughter.
This is literally what you said:
Then private property is no longer easily identifiable by its effects on others, now private property is ‘excess’ personal property, and the question of ‘excess’ is returned to use; and use, as we have established, can be highly irregular but still regarded as valid. Which means we return to square one - under what circumstances can one differentiate between personal and movable private property beyond “simply a matter of those who are liked by the community are treated well, and those who are not extroverted are punished arbitrarily?”
Yes, that’s how clientistic systems begin in early state societies and feudal societies. It’s not pretty.
That’s not at all an answer to the question that I was asked. I reiterate:
"If John Jacobs is living in a little shack on the side of the river, and Malcolm Red is living in a palace a stone’s throw away, how is it moral for Malcolm to continue in that state of affairs?"